


character

by muusings



Series: bonus round 01 [3]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-21
Updated: 2013-06-21
Packaged: 2017-12-15 16:38:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/851681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/muusings/pseuds/muusings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It kills you to see her like this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	character

“Hey, Lalonde,” you whisper. Rose is flung unceremoniously over a pile of cans, rusted and dusty, numbered and stacked and unstacked, toppled and toppling. Her dress is soiled in dirty martinis and foul-smelling, inexact cocktails, and you sigh sadly down at her.

It kills you to see her like this.

“Lalonde, c’mon, wakey wakey. Get up, sunshine.” You pinch your nose and close your eyes for a second. You can feel a headache coming on (your mind flickers to the one she’ll have later, and a part of you laughs bitterly at that) and you’re all at once so, so immensely tired. You’re tired of the drinking, you’re tired of the slurring, you’re tired of the stilted, slanted words and your own fucking ectosiswhatever fucking up your own goddamn name. You’re tired of seeing her like this. You’re tired of _her._

Okay, that---that was harsh, even for you. But some days it feels sort of like that, like the Rose you knew, the Rose you grew up with, the Rose you almost killed yourself with--- _for_ \---well. It almost feels like she’s been taken from you, like someone realized how incredible she was and stole her from you and all they had to replace her with was a shitty approximation, a girl with her face but not her wit, her mouth but not her bite, her calluses but no skill to use them for.

You roll your eyes at yourself and bite your tongue in your mouth softly, like at any moment these thoughts could bare themselves to the audience of an empty room. Like that would make a difference.

If she didn’t set this kind of example, you’d be wanting a drink right now.

Still, you look down at her and marvel. She’s---okay, the drinking isn’t the only distinction from Your Rose. Your Rose was eleven, twelve, thirteen. She was fourteen. She had This Rose’s face, yeah, but it had more baby fat (now she just has adult fat). Her mouth was the same but her lipstick got nicer, more precise, more articulate, and then tapered off into the drunken mess before you, half-smeared, half-abandoned. Her calluses have faded from the trip. Her body is filling out in ways you don’t let yourself consider except in the dark---but then, that’s sort of how you always feel around her nowadays.

You don’t have time to ruminate, though. Gently, more gently than you’ve probably ever done anything but fix your turntables, you lift her from her place on the floor. Her skin is cold on your own and you try to ignore the sensation, and with her in your arms, you consider for an entirely ridiculous moment the notion that maybe you don’t need to put her down, not ever. Maybe if you kept her like this she would stay like this, she would stay and sleep, drooling on your gt pjs and she would never have to drink again, and when finally she woke, she would look to you, her Knight, and decide she wanted to stay.

As it was, you tucked her into bed. Maybe someday, when she isn’t half drunk, when she detoxes, when you’ve beaten this thing---well, maybe then she’ll climb into your arms herself, her lipstick fixed, her eyes clear for damn once, her words sharp and dry and mean like you like them, and she’ll stay forever on her damn own.  
For now, you leave her silently, leaving the door cracked behind you, fixing her mess like always.

The liquor won’t clean itself up.

**Author's Note:**

> br01 prompt: "character is what we do when no-one is watching"


End file.
